Along with death and taxes, it seems another certainty in life is an annual major Call of Duty release, and 2021 is no exception. Activision has confirmed that of course, it is once again making a Call of Duty game for release this year, and as has been reported, Sledgehammer is back at the helm making it. This was revealed during Activision-Blizzard's Q1 earnings call, during which Activision said the game was both "looking great" and "on track" for release in the fall of this year. It will include a campaign, multiplayer, and co-op play, and will "integrate with and enhance existing Call of Duty ecosystem" — possibly a reference to compatibility with Warzone, as has happened with Black Ops Cold War. And critically, it's being "built for next-generation experience." Beyond that, we don't have too many more details about the next Call of Duty, though Activision promises more details "soon." The same report that mentioned Sledgehammer suggests that the game will be called "Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard" and will incorporate (unsurprisingly) a World War II theme, though reports have differed as to whether this is a straightforward WWII take or an alternate timeline. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/15/call-of-duty-warzone-top-10-roofs-of-verdansk"] Sledgehammer has previously been in charge of both Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and has assisted Infinity Ward and Treyarch on other recent Call of Duty titles. Call of Duty continues to do exceeding well as a franchise for Activision, with today's earnings call and results noting that Call of Duty currently boasts 150 million monthly active users [MAU] across all games. Free-to-play Call of Duty and Call of Duty mobile have nearly tripled total MAUs across all Call of Duty games since their launches last year, helped in part by the recent launch of Call of Duty Mobile in China bringing in "tens of millions" of new players. Activision focused on Call of Duty's success as a cornerstone of its earnings call today, making it clear that they intend to continue building out the Call of Duty franchise, as well as implement its business model into the company's other franchises. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Along with death and taxes, it seems another certainty in life is an annual major Call of Duty release, and 2021 is no exception. Activision has confirmed that of course, it is once again making a Call of Duty game for release this year, and as has been reported, Sledgehammer is back at the helm making it. This was revealed during Activision-Blizzard's Q1 earnings call, during which Activision said the game was both "looking great" and "on track" for release in the fall of this year. It will include a campaign, multiplayer, and co-op play, and will "integrate with and enhance existing Call of Duty ecosystem" — possibly a reference to compatibility with Warzone, as has happened with Black Ops Cold War. And critically, it's being "built for next-generation experience." Beyond that, we don't have too many more details about the next Call of Duty, though Activision promises more details "soon." The same report that mentioned Sledgehammer suggests that the game will be called "Call of Duty WWII: Vanguard" and will incorporate (unsurprisingly) a World War II theme, though reports have differed as to whether this is a straightforward WWII take or an alternate timeline. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/15/call-of-duty-warzone-top-10-roofs-of-verdansk"] Sledgehammer has previously been in charge of both Call of Duty: WWII and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and has assisted Infinity Ward and Treyarch on other recent Call of Duty titles. Call of Duty continues to do exceeding well as a franchise for Activision, with today's earnings call and results noting that Call of Duty currently boasts 150 million monthly active users [MAU] across all games. Free-to-play Call of Duty and Call of Duty mobile have nearly tripled total MAUs across all Call of Duty games since their launches last year, helped in part by the recent launch of Call of Duty Mobile in China bringing in "tens of millions" of new players. Activision focused on Call of Duty's success as a cornerstone of its earnings call today, making it clear that they intend to continue building out the Call of Duty franchise, as well as implement its business model into the company's other franchises. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game where players can mine planets, fight other players in all-out war, and fly through wormholes to reach new destinations. Now it’s helping scientists learn more about COVID-19.

Through a citizen science project called Project Discovery, players are able to help scientists in the real world solve problems that need human input, such as helping scientists discover new planets. Over the past year, they’ve been helping scientists learn more about COVID-19.

To date, 327,000 players have completed 1.37 million analysis tasks in-game, which has saved scientists 330.69 years worth of research into how the immune system responds to COVID-19. Speaking to IGN, EVE Online Creative Director, Bergur Finnbogason, explained how the project began.

“This is a project that was initially started by, or at least an idea from, [Massively Multiplayer Online Science CEO and co-founder Attila Szantner] a few years back where he was looking at citizen science projects around the world, all over the internet,” Finnbogason said. “He started seeing this pattern in these projects where basically... these fantastic projects would happen… with super worthy causes… but people would come in, try it once, and then never come back.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/04/eve-online-project-discovery-covid-19-gameplay"]

Seeing that people were so quick to drop these projects, the parties involved devised a way to merge citizen science projects with something that would make people want to stick around. That's where the idea of placing one of these projects in an MMO — a genre with communities of people who do the very opposite of trying something once and never touching it again — was born.

Finnbogason and Szantner said the idea came to them to merge citizen science projects while trying to get input from actual humans with EVE. If the game offered a science project to help real-world scientists, players would be dedicated to it. Thus, Project Discovery was born.

The first Project Discovery project in EVE was centered on identifying proteins in human cells and the second Project Discovery project was centered on the discovery of real exoplanets or distant planets outside of our solar system. Similar to the COVID-19 minigame, EVE players played an in-game minigame to pour through luminosity curve datasets, which represented the brightness of stars as planets passed by them. This helped scientists discover exoplanets in space.

“Our latest installment is this COVID-19 project,” Finnbogason said. “We’ve been running it for almost a year, or exactly a year now, and yeah, it’s super exciting and it’s really turned into a wonderful project.”

If you were to log on to EVE to take part in this COVID-19 project, you’d find that it’s extremely well-implemented into the game. What players are doing when they play the associated minigame is looking at a cluster of multicolor dots. Some are yellow, some are red, some are green, and so on.

“Each dot is a cell,” University of British Columbia medical genetics professor and distinguished scientist of BC Cancer, Ryan Brinkman, said. “It is placed on a 2D graph based on how much it expresses one of many different types of cell surface proteins that can be used to define the cell’s function.”

[caption id="attachment_2509169" align="alignnone" width="720"] Pictured here are two clusters of cells that a player identified in the Project Discovery COVID-19 minigame within EVE Online, Photo Credit: CCP Games[/caption]

Players that play the COVID-19 Project Discovery minigame in EVE will see this 2D graph with multicolor dot cells. All they need to do is use a point-and-click system to draw polygons around the main mass of the clusters. Players earn set rewards when they reach specific ranks associated with the minigame. For example, at Rank 5, players earn the Biosecurity Response Team Mask and at Rank 650, they can earn the Marshal Biosecurity Responders Skin.

“Drawing the polygon allows us to count how many [cell surface proteins] are in that polygon,” Brinkman said. “The number in a given population can change according to, for example, disease of a drug and we can look for similar changes in groups of people (sick vs. healthy) to do discovery… or use it for diagnosis.”

How EVE Online Is Helping Scientists in Our World

How exactly is this helping scientists in the real world? Well, the simplest answer is time. Players have completed the equivalent of over 330 years of work scientists would have otherwise had to do to match what players have done.

“The alternative for scientists is to look everywhere,” Brinkman said in regards to how players are analyzing 40 dimensions of data on a 2D plane that speeds up data research greatly. “Scientists can’t do that, though, because to analyze just one sample, it takes an hour… but we have an infinite amount of monkeys, all banging away on typewriters.”

What players are doing is helping scientists better understand how our immune systems are impacted by this novel coronavirus, according to Brinkman. They are doing this by measuring the chemical makeups of cells, a process otherwise known as Flow Cytometry in the world of science, to determine a body’s immune response to COVID-19.

Science projects happening by way of video games isn’t necessarily a new concept.  Folding@home, a project that utilized the PlayStation 3 among other processors to help scientists develop new therapeutics by simulating the movement of proteins and protein folding, began as early as 2000 and is still live as of six months ago. Never before, though, has it been done on a scale as large as EVE’s massive playerbase.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=eve-online-project-discovery&captions=true"]

Brinkman said the project is 60% COVID-19 help and 40% machine learning A.I. practice, which is another way this EVE minigame is helping the world of science.

“The other really exciting part is there have been approaches that have been developed to automate this analysis process and they all suck,” Brinkman said. “That’s my life's work for 15 years and they all [automated analysis processes] suck for various reasons. The excitement right now in the science world is A.I. machine learning. Everybody’s excited about that.”

The reason the processes "suck" is simple: in order for a machine to learn, someone or something has to teach it to how to learn and for the most part, until Project Discovery, that wasn't possible.

Over 300,000 EVE players have participated in this iteration of the Project Discovery minigame. They are quite literally providing the needed examples of how to analyze data – in this case, COVID-19 cellular data and how the virus affects human immune systems. Brinkman explained this kind of data will accelerate areas of science outside of COVID-19 — areas of science that will have an enormous impact on human health.

Why EVE Online Players Are Participating in Project Discovery

Brinkman said they’re in the thick of everything with this data, with plans to publish findings this time next year – but are players aware of what a simple minigame is doing for the real world, or are they just there for the EVE rewards?

“We’ve seen three categories of players that play this,” Finnbogason said. “One of them is definitely just hardcore into the lore of the game and… playing it for that reason. Then there’s another group playing it for the rewards. I think the largest group, though, is playing it for the science and the rewards are just a bonus and possibly a strong incentive to keep everyone playing.”

Finnbogason said the EVE team worked hard to make this COVID-19 Project Discovery effort feel like something that belonged in EVE. It was really important to the team to theme it to the universe, because “we owe it to our players,” Finnbogason said. He said the team doesn't want the game breaking the fourth wall or the immersion felt everywhere else in the game.

The first Project Discovery project, the one that tasked players with identifying proteins in human cells, centered around an in-game faction called the Sisters of EVE, who were researching a new emergent race of enemies called the Drifters and their tissue samples. The COVID-19 project, however, is run by an in-game entity called Concord, which is the same entity that ran the exoplanets project.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=unimore-laboratory-content-warning-blood&captions=true"]

There are four other rules the EVE team follows beyond immersion when making these projects: the project must be altruistic in nature, meaning none of the parties involved make any money from the project; they need to be consistent in length, so players always know what they’re signing up for when they play the minigame; they need to produce a sizeable dataset, although players have continued to clear right past the team’s dataset goals; and finally, they need complexity in order to keep people interested.

“There was so much player interest in this project right from the get-go,” Finnbogason said. “We kicked this off last March and everyone just doubled down and jumped on this and it just felt like, and still feels like, people want to help solve this pandemic in any way possible. We’re just super humbled and honored to have had a hand in that.”

The project has been implemented into the game for over a year now, but there’s not much of an end in sight at the moment, or at least, the team isn’t quite sure when a new Project Discovery minigame will happen. They like to stick to one at a time, so the COVID-19-related project is the one for the time being.

“Yeah, so one thing about machine learning is you can never have enough data,” Brinkman said. “That much is clear. The more data sets that we get, the better. Even though we have vaccines, the science of COVID-19 isn’t solved. Like, why is COVID-19 so bad, what is this disease doing to the immune system, why are people losing their sense of smell and taste… there’s all this bad stuff that’s really unique to COVID-19, and we haven’t even scratched that surface.”

The Success of Project Discovery

Project Discovery has been a resounding success, both in its first two ventures and its current COVID-19 venture. It even landed EVE Online a cover story on one of the science world’s premiere publications, Nature Biotechnology, which was the first time a fictional spaceship, or fictional anything, had appeared on the cover of that science journal.

“That, to me, was a sign of scientists embracing what we’re doing,” Szantner said. “They take this very seriously… and can see how large gaming communities [such as that of EVE] can substantially help research projects. That’s a very, very important message.”

Elsewhere in media, Project Discovery has landed the EVE Online team a nomination in the 2021 Webby Awards, and according to CCP Games, they’re currently in first place for the People’s Vote award.

Video games are huge, Szantner said, and as time passes by, it’s important to him that society find new ways for games to impact the world for the better.

“Games are bigger than they’ve ever been,” he said. “It’s a big question of what we can do with them and you know, I think it’s about extracting as much value as possible out of them and that’s basically what we’re doing with Project Discovery. It’s one way to do that, at least. You’re just solving virtual puzzles in a video game, but something as simple as cracking a virtual in-game problem… is doing so much for the real world now.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/06/01/why-eve-online-is-unlike-any-other-game"]

Finnbogason said the more they learn about what players are accomplishing with Project Discovery, the more humbling it all is.

“It’s super humbling for us as developers,” he said. “MMOs are so much about building relationships and fostering human interaction, and so this, I think, is yet another project proving that the line between games and reality is merging. It’s a super interesting and exciting time for us and who knows what’s next.”

Szantner said he hopes what’s next is that other developers join in, and some already have. A science-based, citizen science project can be found in Borderlands 3, but Szantner sees limitless potential for what games and their players can do for science.

“I believe this is a very important project, almost like a mission, to show the world that this works,” he said. “Ultimately, the more game devs that jump on board, and the more gamer communities that join, the more we are progressing forward to build practically an unlimited human computation engine.

“It was a miracle to pull off Project Discovery. Now it’s proven and now we can show it works. Now we can show it brings value to gaming communities, game development companies, and science. I think it’s a much easier decision for game developers to come in and implement it into the games… and I hope to see more of it happen in the future.”

[poilib element="accentDivider"]

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer, guide maker, and science guru particularly interested in the intersection of science and games. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game where players can mine planets, fight other players in all-out war, and fly through wormholes to reach new destinations. Now it’s helping scientists learn more about COVID-19.

Through a citizen science project called Project Discovery, players are able to help scientists in the real world solve problems that need human input, such as helping scientists discover new planets. Over the past year, they’ve been helping scientists learn more about COVID-19.

To date, 327,000 players have completed 1.37 million analysis tasks in-game, which has saved scientists 330.69 years worth of research into how the immune system responds to COVID-19. Speaking to IGN, EVE Online Creative Director, Bergur Finnbogason, explained how the project began.

“This is a project that was initially started by, or at least an idea from, [Massively Multiplayer Online Science CEO and co-founder Attila Szantner] a few years back where he was looking at citizen science projects around the world, all over the internet,” Finnbogason said. “He started seeing this pattern in these projects where basically... these fantastic projects would happen… with super worthy causes… but people would come in, try it once, and then never come back.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/04/eve-online-project-discovery-covid-19-gameplay"]

Seeing that people were so quick to drop these projects, the parties involved devised a way to merge citizen science projects with something that would make people want to stick around. That's where the idea of placing one of these projects in an MMO — a genre with communities of people who do the very opposite of trying something once and never touching it again — was born.

Finnbogason and Szantner said the idea came to them to merge citizen science projects while trying to get input from actual humans with EVE. If the game offered a science project to help real-world scientists, players would be dedicated to it. Thus, Project Discovery was born.

The first Project Discovery project in EVE was centered on identifying proteins in human cells and the second Project Discovery project was centered on the discovery of real exoplanets or distant planets outside of our solar system. Similar to the COVID-19 minigame, EVE players played an in-game minigame to pour through luminosity curve datasets, which represented the brightness of stars as planets passed by them. This helped scientists discover exoplanets in space.

“Our latest installment is this COVID-19 project,” Finnbogason said. “We’ve been running it for almost a year, or exactly a year now, and yeah, it’s super exciting and it’s really turned into a wonderful project.”

If you were to log on to EVE to take part in this COVID-19 project, you’d find that it’s extremely well-implemented into the game. What players are doing when they play the associated minigame is looking at a cluster of multicolor dots. Some are yellow, some are red, some are green, and so on.

“Each dot is a cell,” University of British Columbia medical genetics professor and distinguished scientist of BC Cancer, Ryan Brinkman, said. “It is placed on a 2D graph based on how much it expresses one of many different types of cell surface proteins that can be used to define the cell’s function.”

[caption id="attachment_2509169" align="alignnone" width="720"] Pictured here are two clusters of cells that a player identified in the Project Discovery COVID-19 minigame within EVE Online, Photo Credit: CCP Games[/caption]

Players that play the COVID-19 Project Discovery minigame in EVE will see this 2D graph with multicolor dot cells. All they need to do is use a point-and-click system to draw polygons around the main mass of the clusters. Players earn set rewards when they reach specific ranks associated with the minigame. For example, at Rank 5, players earn the Biosecurity Response Team Mask and at Rank 650, they can earn the Marshal Biosecurity Responders Skin.

“Drawing the polygon allows us to count how many [cell surface proteins] are in that polygon,” Brinkman said. “The number in a given population can change according to, for example, disease of a drug and we can look for similar changes in groups of people (sick vs. healthy) to do discovery… or use it for diagnosis.”

How EVE Online Is Helping Scientists in Our World

How exactly is this helping scientists in the real world? Well, the simplest answer is time. Players have completed the equivalent of over 330 years of work scientists would have otherwise had to do to match what players have done.

“The alternative for scientists is to look everywhere,” Brinkman said in regards to how players are analyzing 40 dimensions of data on a 2D plane that speeds up data research greatly. “Scientists can’t do that, though, because to analyze just one sample, it takes an hour… but we have an infinite amount of monkeys, all banging away on typewriters.”

What players are doing is helping scientists better understand how our immune systems are impacted by this novel coronavirus, according to Brinkman. They are doing this by measuring the chemical makeups of cells, a process otherwise known as Flow Cytometry in the world of science, to determine a body’s immune response to COVID-19.

Science projects happening by way of video games isn’t necessarily a new concept.  Folding@home, a project that utilized the PlayStation 3 among other processors to help scientists develop new therapeutics by simulating the movement of proteins and protein folding, began as early as 2000 and is still live as of six months ago. Never before, though, has it been done on a scale as large as EVE’s massive playerbase.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=eve-online-project-discovery&captions=true"]

Brinkman said the project is 60% COVID-19 help and 40% machine learning A.I. practice, which is another way this EVE minigame is helping the world of science.

“The other really exciting part is there have been approaches that have been developed to automate this analysis process and they all suck,” Brinkman said. “That’s my life's work for 15 years and they all [automated analysis processes] suck for various reasons. The excitement right now in the science world is A.I. machine learning. Everybody’s excited about that.”

The reason the processes "suck" is simple: in order for a machine to learn, someone or something has to teach it to how to learn and for the most part, until Project Discovery, that wasn't possible.

Over 300,000 EVE players have participated in this iteration of the Project Discovery minigame. They are quite literally providing the needed examples of how to analyze data – in this case, COVID-19 cellular data and how the virus affects human immune systems. Brinkman explained this kind of data will accelerate areas of science outside of COVID-19 — areas of science that will have an enormous impact on human health.

Why EVE Online Players Are Participating in Project Discovery

Brinkman said they’re in the thick of everything with this data, with plans to publish findings this time next year – but are players aware of what a simple minigame is doing for the real world, or are they just there for the EVE rewards?

“We’ve seen three categories of players that play this,” Finnbogason said. “One of them is definitely just hardcore into the lore of the game and… playing it for that reason. Then there’s another group playing it for the rewards. I think the largest group, though, is playing it for the science and the rewards are just a bonus and possibly a strong incentive to keep everyone playing.”

Finnbogason said the EVE team worked hard to make this COVID-19 Project Discovery effort feel like something that belonged in EVE. It was really important to the team to theme it to the universe, because “we owe it to our players,” Finnbogason said. He said the team doesn't want the game breaking the fourth wall or the immersion felt everywhere else in the game.

The first Project Discovery project, the one that tasked players with identifying proteins in human cells, centered around an in-game faction called the Sisters of EVE, who were researching a new emergent race of enemies called the Drifters and their tissue samples. The COVID-19 project, however, is run by an in-game entity called Concord, which is the same entity that ran the exoplanets project.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=unimore-laboratory-content-warning-blood&captions=true"]

There are four other rules the EVE team follows beyond immersion when making these projects: the project must be altruistic in nature, meaning none of the parties involved make any money from the project; they need to be consistent in length, so players always know what they’re signing up for when they play the minigame; they need to produce a sizeable dataset, although players have continued to clear right past the team’s dataset goals; and finally, they need complexity in order to keep people interested.

“There was so much player interest in this project right from the get-go,” Finnbogason said. “We kicked this off last March and everyone just doubled down and jumped on this and it just felt like, and still feels like, people want to help solve this pandemic in any way possible. We’re just super humbled and honored to have had a hand in that.”

The project has been implemented into the game for over a year now, but there’s not much of an end in sight at the moment, or at least, the team isn’t quite sure when a new Project Discovery minigame will happen. They like to stick to one at a time, so the COVID-19-related project is the one for the time being.

“Yeah, so one thing about machine learning is you can never have enough data,” Brinkman said. “That much is clear. The more data sets that we get, the better. Even though we have vaccines, the science of COVID-19 isn’t solved. Like, why is COVID-19 so bad, what is this disease doing to the immune system, why are people losing their sense of smell and taste… there’s all this bad stuff that’s really unique to COVID-19, and we haven’t even scratched that surface.”

The Success of Project Discovery

Project Discovery has been a resounding success, both in its first two ventures and its current COVID-19 venture. It even landed EVE Online a cover story on one of the science world’s premiere publications, Nature Biotechnology, which was the first time a fictional spaceship, or fictional anything, had appeared on the cover of that science journal.

“That, to me, was a sign of scientists embracing what we’re doing,” Szantner said. “They take this very seriously… and can see how large gaming communities [such as that of EVE] can substantially help research projects. That’s a very, very important message.”

Elsewhere in media, Project Discovery has landed the EVE Online team a nomination in the 2021 Webby Awards, and according to CCP Games, they’re currently in first place for the People’s Vote award.

Video games are huge, Szantner said, and as time passes by, it’s important to him that society find new ways for games to impact the world for the better.

“Games are bigger than they’ve ever been,” he said. “It’s a big question of what we can do with them and you know, I think it’s about extracting as much value as possible out of them and that’s basically what we’re doing with Project Discovery. It’s one way to do that, at least. You’re just solving virtual puzzles in a video game, but something as simple as cracking a virtual in-game problem… is doing so much for the real world now.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/06/01/why-eve-online-is-unlike-any-other-game"]

Finnbogason said the more they learn about what players are accomplishing with Project Discovery, the more humbling it all is.

“It’s super humbling for us as developers,” he said. “MMOs are so much about building relationships and fostering human interaction, and so this, I think, is yet another project proving that the line between games and reality is merging. It’s a super interesting and exciting time for us and who knows what’s next.”

Szantner said he hopes what’s next is that other developers join in, and some already have. A science-based, citizen science project can be found in Borderlands 3, but Szantner sees limitless potential for what games and their players can do for science.

“I believe this is a very important project, almost like a mission, to show the world that this works,” he said. “Ultimately, the more game devs that jump on board, and the more gamer communities that join, the more we are progressing forward to build practically an unlimited human computation engine.

“It was a miracle to pull off Project Discovery. Now it’s proven and now we can show it works. Now we can show it brings value to gaming communities, game development companies, and science. I think it’s a much easier decision for game developers to come in and implement it into the games… and I hope to see more of it happen in the future.”

[poilib element="accentDivider"]

Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer, guide maker, and science guru particularly interested in the intersection of science and games. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Steven Spielberg's next movie has its title. The Fabelmans will be a semi-autobiographical work, drawing from the director's own childhood in Arizona during the 1950's and 60's, per Slash Film. The production is planning to hold open casting calls for the role of Sammy, which is based on Spielberg's younger self. Casting director Cindy Tolan, who worked on Spielberg's upcoming remake of West Side Story, is organizing casting calls for the lead character. The production is searching for two actors for the role, looking to cast a white male between the ages of 14-18 and a white male between the ages of 6-8. That two actors of different ages are needed seems to imply that the film's narrative will stretch over a longer distance of time. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/07/05/whats-it-like-to-have-a-job-interview-with-steven-spielberg"] The two actors will be joining a cast of established stars. In March, Seth Rogen was announced to play a version of Spielberg's "favorite uncle." Michelle Williams will play a character based on Spielberg's mother, while The Batman's Paul Dano will play a version of the director's father. The project is aiming to start production during the summer, with a release planned for 2022. Spielberg co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushner, who collaborated with the director on Munich, Lincoln and West Side Story. The film will mark Spielberg's first screenwriting credit since 2001's A.I. Artificial Intelligence. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=steven-spielbergs-west-side-story&captions=true"] Spielberg has frequently turned to open casting calls for his productions, especially in recent years. Numerous auditions were submitted for key roles in Ready Player One and West Side Story. Before The Fabelmans, Spielberg's West Side Story will hit theaters on December 10. The film was originally set for a holiday 2020 release, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [poilib element="accentDivider"] J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Steven Spielberg's next movie has its title. The Fabelmans will be a semi-autobiographical work, drawing from the director's own childhood in Arizona during the 1950's and 60's, per Slash Film. The production is planning to hold open casting calls for the role of Sammy, which is based on Spielberg's younger self. Casting director Cindy Tolan, who worked on Spielberg's upcoming remake of West Side Story, is organizing casting calls for the lead character. The production is searching for two actors for the role, looking to cast a white male between the ages of 14-18 and a white male between the ages of 6-8. That two actors of different ages are needed seems to imply that the film's narrative will stretch over a longer distance of time. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2015/07/05/whats-it-like-to-have-a-job-interview-with-steven-spielberg"] The two actors will be joining a cast of established stars. In March, Seth Rogen was announced to play a version of Spielberg's "favorite uncle." Michelle Williams will play a character based on Spielberg's mother, while The Batman's Paul Dano will play a version of the director's father. The project is aiming to start production during the summer, with a release planned for 2022. Spielberg co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushner, who collaborated with the director on Munich, Lincoln and West Side Story. The film will mark Spielberg's first screenwriting credit since 2001's A.I. Artificial Intelligence. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=steven-spielbergs-west-side-story&captions=true"] Spielberg has frequently turned to open casting calls for his productions, especially in recent years. Numerous auditions were submitted for key roles in Ready Player One and West Side Story. Before The Fabelmans, Spielberg's West Side Story will hit theaters on December 10. The film was originally set for a holiday 2020 release, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [poilib element="accentDivider"] J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Update (5/05/21 2:25 pm PT) Following the update there are reports of a critical save file error occurring, preventing players from progressing on their run. Developer Housemarque says it is aware of this error and has announced it is rolling back Patch 1.3.3 back to version 1.3.1.

Patch 1.3.3 has been pulled and we are reverting back to 1.3.1 until it's fixed.

We are fixing the issue now and a new patch will be published in a few hours All users affected by the 1.3.3 need to re-download the game. Our sincerest apologies. — Housemarque (@Housemarque) May 5, 2021

Players who installed the latest patch will need to re-install the game to revert back to the previous patch, so if your game auto-updated to the newest patch you should check your version number to see if you'll need to revert to an older one. Housemarque says it will keep working on Patch 1.3.3 until it is fixed. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Update (5/05/21 11:30 am PT) Housemarque has released the patch notes for today's 1.3.3 patch and it brings fixes to trophy issues, stability, preorder bonuses, and more. Here's what you can expect in today's 1.3.3 patch for Returnal:

• Fixed an issue where certain trophies might not unlock under specific gameplay conditions. Note: missing trophies will need to be replayed to unlock.
• Multiple stability fixes addressing rare crashes/hangs
• Fixed an issue with preorder suits occasionally blocking item collection and door opening.
• Fixed an incorrect healing behavior when resting in Helios.
• Configuration changes to increase the number of scout corpses available in all biomes.
• Fixed issues with certain custom controller mappings.
• Numerous minor fixes and improvements.

[poilib element="accentDivider"] Original story (5/04/21): Housemarque has warned Returnal players who wish to keep their current run to turn off PS5's auto-update feature as a new patch will go live tomorrow, May 5, at 12pm PT/3pm ET/8pm BST. Housemarque shared the news on Twitter, and the warning is necessary because Returnal does not let you save during its runs, some of which can take two to three hours. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/29/returnal-review"] The only way to currently save your place in a Returnal run is to put your PS5 into Rest Mode. While this is great in theory, an auto-update will reset the game and erase your run from existence. While they haven't committed to any changes, Housemarque did say that "we hear the community and we love you all. Nothing to announce now, but keep playing and enjoying the challenge as you can!" In our review of Returnal, we said, "Its roguelike runs are too long and it needs a way to save in the middle of them, but Returnal's third-person shooter action, clever story, and atmosphere are excellent." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/30/returnal-20-essential-combat-tips"] For more on Returnal, check out the game director's comments on how difficulty is an "integral part" or Housemarque's philosophy and some essential tips and tricks to get you started. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Update (5/05/21) Housemarque has released the patch notes for today's 1.3.3 patch and it brings fixes to trophy issues, stability, preorder bonuses, and more. Here's what you can expect in today's 1.3.3 patch for Returnal:

• Fixed an issue where certain trophies might not unlock under specific gameplay conditions. Note: missing trophies will need to be replayed to unlock.
• Multiple stability fixes addressing rare crashes/hangs
• Fixed an issue with preorder suits occasionally blocking item collection and door opening.
• Fixed an incorrect healing behavior when resting in Helios.
• Configuration changes to increase the number of scout corpses available in all biomes.
• Fixed issues with certain custom controller mappings.
• Numerous minor fixes and improvements.

[poilib element="accentDivider"] Original story (5/04/21): Housemarque has warned Returnal players who wish to keep their current run to turn off PS5's auto-update feature as a new patch will go live tomorrow, May 5, at 12pm PT/3pm ET/8pm BST. Housemarque shared the news on Twitter, and the warning is necessary because Returnal does not let you save during its runs, some of which can take two to three hours. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/29/returnal-review"] The only way to currently save your place in a Returnal run is to put your PS5 into Rest Mode. While this is great in theory, an auto-update will reset the game and erase your run from existence. While they haven't committed to any changes, Housemarque did say that "we hear the community and we love you all. Nothing to announce now, but keep playing and enjoying the challenge as you can!" In our review of Returnal, we said, "Its roguelike runs are too long and it needs a way to save in the middle of them, but Returnal's third-person shooter action, clever story, and atmosphere are excellent." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/30/returnal-20-essential-combat-tips"] For more on Returnal, check out the game director's comments on how difficulty is an "integral part" or Housemarque's philosophy and some essential tips and tricks to get you started. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

It's only the second day of Epic and Apple going head-to-head in the courts, and it's already clear that the United States court system was not prepared for the cocktail of a high-profile case centered around an industry that is secretive often to the point of absurdity. Add in struggles with COVID-19 precautions and a call-in audience of rowdy gamers, and this trial is shaping up to be very interesting indeed. Already, there's been an ongoing kerfuffle between lawyers, third parties, and the judge regarding games leaks occurring via court documents. To generalize a bit, exhibits submitted as evidence in court are usually a matter of public record, unless a document is "sealed," meaning it is only visible to a select group of people in court to whom it is relevant. This might be done for a number of reasons — in the case of Epic v. Apple, it's a matter of concern because a lot of the evidence includes internal documents from video game companies that might reference trade secrets, unannounced projects, and so forth. Unfortunately, it's causing a lot of problems for everyone in this particular trial. It's unclear exactly who dropped the ball in Epic v. Apple, but the trial as a whole keeps hitting stumbling blocks because third-parties are complaining that their classified documents are being leaked to the public via a public folder where all the exhibits are being submitted for perusal. The problem was first apparent yesterday, when over 100 documents submitted to the folder at the start of the day were deleted without explanation, then (mostly) slowly reinstated over the rest of the day. One of the biggest drops of confidential information was caught by The Verge, showing that Sony really, really hated the idea of cross-platform play on its consoles — a line of questioning that was touched upon during Sweeney's cross-examination yesterday, though not in as much detail.. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/13/fortnite-1984-apple-parody-video-short"] The problems continued today. On the bright side (for gaming companies anyway), whoever is in charge of releasing documents seems to have slowed down a bit and is waiting to make sure they aren't confidential first, though the judge pointed out right out of the gate that it was pointless to re-seal documents that were already leaked. But now there's a new problem: the court keeps getting surprised by on-the-spot, third-party requests for confidentiality. In one amusing exchange early in the day, a piece of evidence was submitted by Apple with the intent of questioning Sweeney about it. However, proceedings were paused as Epic's lawyers pushed back, saying there was confidential information in the document that Epic's third-party partners didn't want either spoken out loud (where anyone listening on a public line could hear it) or entered into public record. Apple's lawyer argued back, saying this was the first he'd heard of the issue, and that he just wanted to ask questions about Epic Games' business decisions, prompting Epic to respond that they had "only just been alerted to this issue." It was here that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers finally lost her patience. "I have received — I don't know what, ten? — motions from third parties asking me to seal information," she said. "I have not received a request with respect to this document." Epic's lawyer then responded by naming the third-party that is apparently mentioned in the exhibit and wanted to be redacted: Paradox (most likely Paradox Interactive). It's not clear exactly what their negotiations with Epic were beyond a "third-party deal" or are in relation to this document, which has not yet been released and likely will end up redacted (the line of questioning did not reveal anything further). For all we know, it could just be some secretive number connected to Paradox-published Surviving the Aftermath on the Epic Games Store. But as Apple's lawyer pointed out in exasperation moments later, Epic's lawyer was the one who named the company who didn't want to be named publicly, and if the goal was to keep the public from running with leaks, then this exchange hadn't helped. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/13/apple-removes-fortnite-from-ios-app-store"] Leaks were mentioned a few more times in the proceedings today, including one instance where Epic's lawyer once again stepped in to get a single word redacted from a document on the spot. It seems that a number of Epic's third-party partners are stepping in last minute with requests, realizing that their announcements, plans, and trade secrets might be on the line as a gaming audience hungry for news descends upon folders of court exhibits looking for something juicy. It's a testament both to the high-profile nature of Epic v. Apple, but also the bizarre silliness that is the overly secretive games industry, in which a publisher everyone knows was resistant to cross-platform play was mortified anyone might find out it was... very resistant to cross-platform play. Aside from the secrecy problems, the trial's start has also struggled with a number of more normal technical issues that have nonetheless been exacerbated by the fact that hundreds of gamers are interested in the proceedings. Yesterday, the trial started late in part because the court had to figure out how to mute the public call-in line to stop random callers from yelling "Free Fortnite" (and other less appropriate things) and playing Travis Scott music for everyone to hear — another example of US courts being unprepared for how the games enthusiast populace interacts with things they're interested in. The Epic v. Apple trial will be ongoing over the next three weeks, and aside from the Sony leaks there have been numerous other weird or fascinating tidbits mined from the examinations and court documents, including how much Fortnite makes and how much Epic spends on exclusives, details about Walmart's attempt at a cloud gaming service, and Epic's plans to put Samus Aran in Fortnite. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

It's only the second day of Epic and Apple going head-to-head in the courts, and it's already clear that the United States court system was not prepared for the cocktail of a high-profile case centered around an industry that is secretive often to the point of absurdity. Add in struggles with COVID-19 precautions and a call-in audience of rowdy gamers, and this trial is shaping up to be very interesting indeed. Already, there's been an ongoing kerfuffle between lawyers, third parties, and the judge regarding games leaks occurring via court documents. To generalize a bit, exhibits submitted as evidence in court are usually a matter of public record, unless a document is "sealed," meaning it is only visible to a select group of people in court to whom it is relevant. This might be done for a number of reasons — in the case of Epic v. Apple, it's a matter of concern because a lot of the evidence includes internal documents from video game companies that might reference trade secrets, unannounced projects, and so forth. Unfortunately, it's causing a lot of problems for everyone in this particular trial. It's unclear exactly who dropped the ball in Epic v. Apple, but the trial as a whole keeps hitting stumbling blocks because third-parties are complaining that their classified documents are being leaked to the public via a public folder where all the exhibits are being submitted for perusal. The problem was first apparent yesterday, when over 100 documents submitted to the folder at the start of the day were deleted without explanation, then (mostly) slowly reinstated over the rest of the day. One of the biggest drops of confidential information was caught by The Verge, showing that Sony really, really hated the idea of cross-platform play on its consoles — a line of questioning that was touched upon during Sweeney's cross-examination yesterday, though not in as much detail.. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/13/fortnite-1984-apple-parody-video-short"] The problems continued today. On the bright side (for gaming companies anyway), whoever is in charge of releasing documents seems to have slowed down a bit and is waiting to make sure they aren't confidential first, though the judge pointed out right out of the gate that it was pointless to re-seal documents that were already leaked. But now there's a new problem: the court keeps getting surprised by on-the-spot, third-party requests for confidentiality. In one amusing exchange early in the day, a piece of evidence was submitted by Apple with the intent of questioning Sweeney about it. However, proceedings were paused as Epic's lawyers pushed back, saying there was confidential information in the document that Epic's third-party partners didn't want either spoken out loud (where anyone listening on a public line could hear it) or entered into public record. Apple's lawyer argued back, saying this was the first he'd heard of the issue, and that he just wanted to ask questions about Epic Games' business decisions, prompting Epic to respond that they had "only just been alerted to this issue." It was here that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers finally lost her patience. "I have received — I don't know what, ten? — motions from third parties asking me to seal information," she said. "I have not received a request with respect to this document." Epic's lawyer then responded by naming the third-party that is apparently mentioned in the exhibit and wanted to be redacted: Paradox (most likely Paradox Interactive). It's not clear exactly what their negotiations with Epic were beyond a "third-party deal" or are in relation to this document, which has not yet been released and likely will end up redacted (the line of questioning did not reveal anything further). For all we know, it could just be some secretive number connected to Paradox-published Surviving the Aftermath on the Epic Games Store. But as Apple's lawyer pointed out in exasperation moments later, Epic's lawyer was the one who named the company who didn't want to be named publicly, and if the goal was to keep the public from running with leaks, then this exchange hadn't helped. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/08/13/apple-removes-fortnite-from-ios-app-store"] Leaks were mentioned a few more times in the proceedings today, including one instance where Epic's lawyer once again stepped in to get a single word redacted from a document on the spot. It seems that a number of Epic's third-party partners are stepping in last minute with requests, realizing that their announcements, plans, and trade secrets might be on the line as a gaming audience hungry for news descends upon folders of court exhibits looking for something juicy. It's a testament both to the high-profile nature of Epic v. Apple, but also the bizarre silliness that is the overly secretive games industry, in which a publisher everyone knows was resistant to cross-platform play was mortified anyone might find out it was... very resistant to cross-platform play. Aside from the secrecy problems, the trial's start has also struggled with a number of more normal technical issues that have nonetheless been exacerbated by the fact that hundreds of gamers are interested in the proceedings. Yesterday, the trial started late in part because the court had to figure out how to mute the public call-in line to stop random callers from yelling "Free Fortnite" (and other less appropriate things) and playing Travis Scott music for everyone to hear — another example of US courts being unprepared for how the games enthusiast populace interacts with things they're interested in. The Epic v. Apple trial will be ongoing over the next three weeks, and aside from the Sony leaks there have been numerous other weird or fascinating tidbits mined from the examinations and court documents, including how much Fortnite makes and how much Epic spends on exclusives, details about Walmart's attempt at a cloud gaming service, and Epic's plans to put Samus Aran in Fortnite. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.